Many motor vehicles contain one or more gauge displays used for conveying information to the vehicle operator. In some of these gauge displays, the display is backlit, so that light supplied typically from behind the display travels through translucent graphics portions of the display enabling the graphics portions to emit light.
One known method of back-lighting displays is the use of light wave-guides, known as light pipes, which are typically constructed of transparent plastic. If a vehicle instrument cluster includes air core gauges and requires extensive light piping to adequately back-light the display, the gauges are typically mounted to a case housing or a circuit board with a light pipe placed in front of the gauge. In such methods of mounting the air core gauges, several additional fasteners may be necessary to achieve the mounting of the air core gauges, with some systems requiring numerous additional fasteners for each individual gauge.
These above mentioned additional fasteners add cost to display systems because each additional fastener is another part that must be purchased and for which there must be an administrative accounting. What is desired is a way to decrease the cost of the construction of displays such as those used in vehicle instrument clusters and to increase the speed of display assembly.